The rest of your post is irrelevant. You have no right to independent thought. Whatever you think is meaningless. If you don’t believe in rights, what does the rest of your post even mean. You’re just going to do what your rules & betters tell you to do…
[/quote]
There is a flaw in your thinking right now, at least in the way you approach my argument.
Let us take my reasoning in the manner you are right now. I believe natural rights do not exist (within a vacuum, as in in of themselves just naturally without cause or direction; I am perfectly willing to accept that natural rights exist as a result of some God instilling it within us). Ergo, I am not free.
But you’re not taking my argument seriously. If I do not believe natural rights exist, then that must mean that not only am I not free, but no one is! No one has natural rights. No one is free in the sense that you are using the word right now.
Ergo, the way you extrapolated my argument in the quote above doesn’t work. If no one is free, then there can be no “betters” or anyone who is capable of independent thought or w.e. In fact, if we take your argument that “not free=incapable of independent thought”, then no one can enslave me anyhow.
You keep on arguing from the stance that I’m creating differences between people. I don’t know why. If I argue that natural rights do not exist, then shouldn’t it be obvious that I mean it doesn’t exist for everyone?
[quote]magick wrote:
You need to find a way to bridge the argumentative gap that has you go from “natural instinct” to “natural right”.[/quote]
Why assume they are different?
[/quote]
Because then you must assume that rights just exist. That they just came out of nowhere and just existed in perpetuity.
But, given our understanding of the word “rights”, that’s not possible. Rights MUST be conferred upon someone, or at the very least established by someone. They’re not just born out of nothing.
That’s why I have no problem with a higher being or God, capable of actually conferring such rights upon us or having the authority to establish such rights, being attributed with the creation of natural rights. That’s why I have no problem with the way DBCooper argued in the other thread. If we accept that God gave us natural rights, and instilled said rights into us in the form of instincts we have from birth, then that’s fine with me. The point of contention at that point would probably be either whether God actually has the authority to give us natural rights/whether God even exists at all.
But the argument that rights just come out of nowhere simply doesn’t make sense to me. The argument that “natural instincts are a sign of natural rights” simply doesn’t work unless you also place the assumption that a God gave us such rights.
In short, the concept of “natural rights” DEMANDS the existence of a God.
[quote]magick wrote:
If I do not believe natural rights exist, then that must mean that not only am I not free, but no one is! No one has natural rights. No one is free in the sense that you are using the word right now.
Ergo, the way you extrapolated my argument in the quote above doesn’t work. If no one is free, then there can be no “betters” or anyone who is capable of independent thought or w.e. In fact, if we take your argument that “not free=incapable of independent thought”, then no one can enslave me anyhow.
[/quote]
Now you’re starting to get it.
[quote]magick wrote:
But the argument that rights just come out of nowhere simply doesn’t make sense to me. The argument that “natural instincts are a sign of natural rights” simply doesn’t work unless you also place the assumption that a God gave us such rights.
In short, the concept of “natural rights” DEMANDS the existence of a God.[/quote]
Do me a favor, swap out “rights” for “the universe” in your above statements.
If the “big bang” makes sense to people, Rights without God can too.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
Now you’re starting to get it.[/quote]
…
If “everyone is free” and “everyone is not free” can lead to the same thing, then why bother even getting all riled up about it.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
If the “big bang” makes sense to people, Rights without God can too.[/quote]
Well, I think the Big Bang theory doesn’t make sense at all. It’s all fine and good to claim that the Big Ban occurred (though,afaik, at this point our understanding of it is still very much hypothetical in nature), but WHAT THE FUCK CAUSED IT?
I always say this to people “until we determine what caused the big bang theory, I stay an agnostic/partial to belief in God/etc”.
Point being- Big Bang theory doesn’t make sense to me. Rights without God doesn’t make sense to me.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
Now you’re starting to get it.[/quote]
…
If “everyone is free” and “everyone is not free” can lead to the same thing, then why bother even getting all riled up about it.[/quote]
But they don’t lead to the same thing. Only one of those leads to us having this conversation.
I mean, we simply are free. We have free thought, free emotion, we have the instincts to be free. And many, many a person has sacrificed not only their lives but those of those that agree for freedom. Often times for freedom they would never get to enjoy themselves.
What you want, what you think, what you fight for is meaningless if you aren’t free to do those things. And if the right to be free doesn’t exist outside the confines of “man made construct” then you aren’t free.
[quote] but WHAT THE FUCK CAUSED IT?
[/quote]
We’re on the same page here. I just wanted to know what you thought about that. Thanks.
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
Here’s a funny question, if I ask a muslim owned restaurant to make a bacon cake for a gay wedding, is it a hate crime?[/quote]
This day and age you’d be the one who gets shit on for this, you big bad meanie!
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
But they don’t lead to the same thing. Only one of those leads to us having this conversation.
I mean, we simply are free. We have free thought, free emotion, we have the instincts to be free. And many, many a person has sacrificed not only their lives but those of those that agree for freedom. Often times for freedom they would never get to enjoy themselves.
What you want, what you think, what you fight for is meaningless if you aren’t free to do those things. And if the right to be free doesn’t exist outside the confines of “man made construct” then you aren’t free.
[/quote]
But you just wrote “Now you’re getting it” to what I wrote earlier. Even though I started from what essentially amounts to “no one is free” (at least, by your words) as the starting point.
So is the important point the fact that “everyone is X” or that we use the word “free” over “not free”?
Magick, stop trying to bastardize the thread by reducing the thing down to a semantical issue.
A right in the sense that we are using it here is something to which someone is entitled, namely the absence of force against one’s person, property, or life.
Something we are entitled to is something we are given, or something we already have and have acquired through legal means. The latter definition is immaterial for our discussion.
The argument is essentially that we are given rights. Natural Rights are given to us by our nature, by simply being humans. We are given life, liberty, and the ability to acquire property (through the uniquely human use of reason). Instincts are just things that we acquire by virtue of being humans as well. They are “human” instincts, just like other animals seem to have other types of instincts, such as salmon or waterfowl.
The idea that we have the right to life, liberty, and property is affirmed by our instinctual reaction to a loss of these things, or the threat thereof. Who gives us these rights isn’t even really that important as long as we understand that whatever it is that creates Life is what creates these rights when they create Life in the form of a person. An atheist might argue along instinctual lines, while a Christian might argue that God gave us these rights. Regardless, we have life, liberty, and the uniquely human ability to acquire property, along with the innate ability to protect these things and the instinctual reaction to do so.
If you just bothered to look up the standard definition of the noun form of “right”, along with “instinct”, you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble on this issue. Which, I presume, is why Beans appears to not take your argument very seriously. It isn’t a seriously thought-out argument.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Magick, stop trying to bastardize the thread by reducing the thing down to a semantical issue.[/quote]
When CountingBeans takes what I wrote in an attempt to dispute his assertions and writes “now you’re getting it”, I can’t help but wonder wtf is going on.
If you think that is me getting into semantics, then so be it.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
A right in the sense that we are using it here is something to which someone is entitled, namely the absence of force against one’s person, property, or life.
Something we are entitled to is something we are given,[/quote]
Correct, and which is why I am continually arguing that natural rights cannot exist outside of God.
Look, as I wrote multiple times already, I have absolutely no problem with the concept of natural rights as given to us by God, and our instincts being representative of this natural right.
But the concept of natural rights independent of God makes no sense to me. Because, as you wrote, rights must be given. They do not exist out of nothing. If they exist by our nature, then someone/something must have defined that nature.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
If you just bothered to look up the standard definition of the noun form of “right”, along with “instinct”, you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble on this issue. Which, I presume, is why Beans appears to not take your argument very seriously. It isn’t a seriously thought-out argument.[/quote]
Uh, no. My entire issue with what Countingbeans is arguing (that natural rights can exist independent of God) derives entirely from the definition of rights you posed in your post.
Rights must be given by someone/something. Ergo, natural rights and all sense of it (assuming our instincts are representative of our natural rights as defined by someone/something) must have been given to us by someone/something.
Ergo, natural rights depends on the existence of someone/something. We could call this someone/something whatever the fuck you want. Mother Nature. God. W.e. The point is, you must believe in the existence of some higher power/transcendent being that has the ability/authority to give us rights.
Indeed, this is why I find liberals who argue that we have any sort of rights (right to healthcare/good living/blah blah blah) frankly preposterous. It seems absolutely asinine to me to argue that we have a right to anything without giving clear attribution to who gave us that right. Doubly so when they argue for innate right to random things while also arguing that God/some transcendent being doesn’t exist.
Conclusion- We’re arguing the same things. The difference between us comes from the fact that you seemingly clearly believe in the existence of God. I am ambivalent on the matter. But, as far as I can tell, I agree with you 100% when it comes to the concept of natural rights, provided that I accept the assumption that God exists along with it. I mean, I see absolutely no reason to disagree with anything you wrote in your above post, besides the portion where you say my argument isn’t well thought-out. Because that’s a mean thing to say.
Magick, natural rights do not need the existence of “God”. They only need the existence of something of such nature that it is capable of conferring upon an organism an ability unique to all others and which makes this particular organism the dominant organism on the planet.
That organism is us. We clearly enjoy a status that no other living thing on this plant enjoys. By virtue of our existence we have natural rights, not by virtue of what created us. If we had to know the exact nature of what created us in order for us to then arrive at truths based on said nature, then we would be unable to accept anything as reality. We cannot ever really know the nature of what it is that created us as a species and has implanted this special status within us.
But we DO know for certain that we exist and we understand quite a bit about our nature, both as a species and (probably to a lesser extent) as an individual. And since we exist, and since we have the ability to reason, and since this ability is clearly a “special” ability that no other thing has regardless of what put it there, we have reasoned that this then places some sort of special status upon our actual lives, the very vessels in which this special quality resides. Life, the liberty to use it (and the reason that comes with it), and the ability to keep the property that we have the unique ability to create and acquire, are all fundamental aspects of reason.
Since reason is “special”, and since it is naturally a part of us, and since this part of us is “given” at the point of life, and since a right is an entitlement and an entitlement is something that is legitimately given to us (not stolen or acquired through other such means), what is given to us is a “right”.
This differentiates between political rights and natural rights. Political rights are rights along your typical entitlement lines, the source of contention being whether the gov’t can justifiably create such rights. Natural Rights are different in that they are also created and given to us, but at birth and by SOME sort of entity more powerful than ourselves rather than a gov’t or some other human construct. Since natural rights are rights given to ALL at birth, they necessarily override all other rights that would follow.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Magick, natural rights do not need the existence of “God”.[/quote]
They do. And one might as well believe in a god if one believes in natural rights. Neither is less 'superstitious. Where is my empirical and objective proof for natural rights, also?
Confers upon us…Would you believe a rock, or any other dumb collection of particles, decided upon laws for how a people on an island ought to treat each other? Why does a rock care about people? If one is a slave and the other a master? Does the rock have any concept of “ought to treat each other.” If instead I said a man had written the “oughts” we would be much less surprised since an intelligence now enters the picture. Now of course the man has no authority or proof concerning his thoughts. That’s a separate debate. However, the presence of a necessary intelligence behind these obligations towards each other, these oughts, is satisfied.
Our status is the same as every living thing on this planet. Live, reproduce, shit, and die. And almost certainly something will wipe us out. A plague the likes never before seen, our own hubris, the sun dying, species/bio-sphere ending meteor events. And the cold, deaf, and dumb universe/nature won’t give a flying crap that some creature that imagined itself to be unique blinked out of continued existence. So, how can it be said that our status is unique, out of thin air? It’s sort of expected, considering our sun and our position to it, along with other factors. For that matter, exactly how do we measure “dominant” species of the planet? Our adaptive traits? Why? The ant is thriving, after all.
Well, if one doesn’t know, or believe, ANYTHING about the nature of the intelligence that conferred our rights, then how does one know what these rights entail, if that intelligence cared to even endow us with rights in the first place. Perhaps that creator is a god of struggle and strife. Of the fittest and winner takes all. Sort of like you see throughout all of nature (including ourselves).
We have? Looking at human history, I’m not so sure. And there are certainly many intelligent people who will be the first to tell you they have reasoned out no such thing, “now show me rights under a microscope.” In the end, you’ve basically said people confer rights (whatever those may be) on themselves and each other, essentially, because the human power of reason makes them come into reality out of nothing. Unfortunately man has not/is not in agreement. And since we’re a temporal thing, as individuals, as nations, as cultures, and even as a species, man doesn’t have the authority to confer INHERENT rights. Rights which transcend the past, present, and future circumstance of laws and cultures.
And since a DUMB universe could care less that you have the right to your property…That is since, it is incapable of caring our thinking upon the issue at all. It screams of an intelligence.
Not at all. If it is deemed that a group of individuals, based on some criteria, has a right to some portion of your property, and an effective amount of might backs them up (the state and its courts) it is the ‘birth rights’ that are overridden. Otherwise, why is your missing property, missing at all? Has the entity you spoke of passed judgement in your lifetime on the matter, in the world?
The only thing I can come up with is this intelligence, which conferred upon us our rights, must be an inescapable judge, above and beyond our own judges and their fanciful acceptance of this and that “right” of the moment. But surely this isn’t the case as Despots (as an individual, or as mob of people with a representative government) also die of old age in their homes without ever meeting the judge who conferred and oversees your natural rights. So, inescapable? Final authority which can’t be overridden? Hardly.
Unless…Unless, there is another life at the end of this one. One in which every single individual must pass into. One in which this entity would then hand down its judgment. A judgement that no other power exists to overturn.
Natural Rights are different in that they are also created and given to us, but at birth and by SOME sort of entity more powerful than ourselves rather than a gov’t or some other human construct.[/quote]
I’m having a really difficult time trying to reconcile this particular part of your argument with the remainder of your argument.
We are seemingly the only beings on Earth capable of reason and introspection. We are unique in this regard. Because we are born with this ability to reason, it imbues us with certain natural rights borne from our reasoning.
Afaik, this is what you argued in your post. Fine. I don’t really agree with it, but let’s ignore that for now.
Can you tell me how you can reconcile this with “by SOME sort of entity more powerful than ourselves”.
I mean, your argument can be distilled down to “We have natural rights because we are special, and we can reason that we have natural rights because of our special abilities”. In other words, “we give ourselves natural rights”.
This flies right in the face of “by SOME sort of entity more powerful than ourselves”.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Not meaning to answer for Delbert but no, it can’t be distilled down to that. Not even close.
Human reason is eliminated from the equation beyond what it takes to recognize that human reason can’t deliver the goods.[/quote]
Dude. Read. What. He. Wrote.
[quote]
Magick, natural rights do not need the existence of “God”. They only need the existence of something of such nature that it is capable of conferring upon an organism an ability unique to all others and which makes this particular organism the dominant organism on the planet.
That organism is us.[/quote]
[quote]
But we DO know for certain that we exist and we understand quite a bit about our nature, both as a species and (probably to a lesser extent) as an individual. And since we exist, and since we have the ability to reason, and since this ability is clearly a “special” ability that no other thing has regardless of what put it there, we have reasoned that this then places some sort of special status upon our actual lives, the very vessels in which this special quality resides. Life, the liberty to use it (and the reason that comes with it), and the ability to keep the property that we have the unique ability to create and acquire, are all fundamental aspects of reason. [/quote]
If DBCooper sticks to his guns, then he’s arguing something VERY different from you and I would argue Pushharder.
Natural Rights are different in that they are also created and given to us, but at birth and by SOME sort of entity more powerful than ourselves rather than a gov’t or some other human construct.[/quote]
I’m having a really difficult time trying to reconcile this particular part of your argument with the remainder of your argument.
We are seemingly the only beings on Earth capable of reason and introspection. We are unique in this regard. Because we are born with this ability to reason, it imbues us with certain natural rights borne from our reasoning.
Afaik, this is what you argued in your post. Fine. I don’t really agree with it, but let’s ignore that for now.
Can you tell me how you can reconcile this with “by SOME sort of entity more powerful than ourselves”.
I mean, your argument can be distilled down to “We have natural rights because we are special, and we can reason that we have natural rights because of our special abilities”. In other words, “we give ourselves natural rights”.
This flies right in the face of “by SOME sort of entity more powerful than ourselves”.[/quote]
You are extremely far off-base with your analysis of what I’m saying.
We are special because it is obvious. We are special because we have a fundamental ability to do what no other organism on this planet can do. The fact that we can sit here and “discover” what makes us unique is in itself what makes us special: the ability to reason.
We are not imbued with certain natural rights because we can reason or because we are special. That uniqueness IS a natural right,it isn’t the vessel by which we discover Natural Rights.
We don’t use reason to give ourselves Natural Rights, reason IS a Natural Right. We use this reason to discover the idea of Natural Rights, namely that what is given to us at birth by our nature is a Natural Right. We simply use what was given to us to discover what was given to us. We don’t give ourselves Natural Rights, we use what was given to us to discover what we already have.